When a customer purchases a product using an on-line service, the customer usually enters on a screen of a personal computer a product name, a price, a store name and so on. Products retrieved in accordance with the entered conditions are displayed on the screen. Such a retrieving method may present an enormous number of products to the customer, which may make it difficult for the customer to select a desired product. In order to resolve such a difficulty, several methods are proposed for selecting and presenting products that a customer desires.
The Japanese Patent Application Unexamined Publication No. 2001-43281 discloses a method for providing highly-reliable information about a product to a customer who wants to purchase the product. An agent server records in a database request information from a member's terminal. The request information includes data (product name, price etc.) about a product which the member wants to purchase. The agent server searches the database for the request information in response to a request from a terminal located at a store. The result of the search is transmitted to the terminal of the store. Depending on the search result, information (inventory, price etc.) for offering one or more products is entered from the store terminal. The entered offering information is transmitted to the member's terminal.
However, according to the above method, the pre-registered store needs to retrieve the request information. Analysis of the retrieved request information for responding to a customer needs to be performed by human being. When the number of requests increases, the process at the store may incur some delay, which may cause a delay in replying to the customer. The method also includes a process for determining a store in which the request information is processed in accordance with a category included in the request information. The method fails to propose a product in view of the preferences and tendency of a customer.
Conventionally, sales of a product is performed by sales staff. The sales staff can propose a product according to the characteristics of a customer in view of the preferences and tendency of the customer by talking with the customer. However, the sales of a product performed by such sales staff takes a cost. Whether a proposed product meets the desire of a customer depends on the knowledge of sales staff. In the case of a product having various components such as a vehicle, it is difficult for a single sales person to get knowledge about all of the vehicle-related products because there are many suppliers for supplying such vehicle-related products.
When a customer already knows the name or type of a product, it is not so difficult for the customer to retrieve the desired product by himself or herself However, it is difficult for a customer to know what kind of products that meet his or her own personality are available in the market. For example, it is especially difficult for a person having no expert knowledge about a vehicle to determine what equipment should be installed in order to satisfy a desire such as “I want my own car to be a car with which I can express my own personality.” It is also difficult for such a person to know what equipment should be installed in order to satisfy an abstract desire such as “I want to make the appearance of my own car beautiful.”
Therefore, there exists a need for a computer system that can retrieve a product in accordance with the characteristics of a customer and present it to the customer. There exists another need for a computer system that can retrieve a product that meets an abstract desire of a customer and present it to the customer.